


Embark

by psalloacappella



Series: Particles [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Blank Period, Curses, F the shinobi state, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26411287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: When he comes home from a mission or arrives after a debrief, he appears at her office window lingering as a beast, a bat. The lovesick trope, a tale as old as time.I was gone too often. Again. I was given a second chance, and squandered it.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Particles [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919686
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Embark

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bunch of trashy sad dark ficlets that have no home so here's some loosely edited dribble drabble

❦

When he comes home from a mission or arrives after a debrief, he appears at her office window lingering as a beast, a bat. The lovesick trope, a tale as old as time. 

Today, with his arms full of things to drop off, he uses the front doors of the hospital the way normal people do. Which he loathes, because it’s difficult to lift your chin and reclaim a space you’ve threatened to destroy and has done the same to you — a space that still doesn’t quite feel like home yet, pressing upon him as its daily routine. 

For her, he endures it. Perhaps he believes every time he’s carrying things down the hallway, eyes askew and avoidant in the face of medics and families and friends, that they'll believe he’s trying. 

It might endear them to him; fool them into believing, perhaps, he’s human through and through. 

Sometimes it’s flowers chosen with the help of a friend (hers, not so much his). Many times it’s laundry even though she laughs in that gentle lilt, music, laced with the reedy scrape of exhaustion: _I can outsource that now, Sasuke. You don’t have to do it for me_. Beaming at him of course, because the fact that he labors on it just for her never fails to cause that knot in the throat, that unadorned affection. This careful, comfortable domesticity. 

For him, he can watch the blood run off the fabric, rivulets on his hands, and feel that he’s somehow washing away innumerable personal sins.

 _I can meet you at home, you know._ With bright eyes even in the gloom as the sun sags under the horizon; with calloused hands and slender fingers that yank the dead from the edge, bring cold men back to life — she reaches for him across the detritus of the desk and holds on. Sasuke doesn’t feel deserving even of this, these unremitting drips and dregs of endless love.

When it’s late, he’ll pull her from her chair or rouse her from sleep, prop her lithe body on the edge of her desk, and kiss her to the moon and back. Whispers that couldn’t be attributed to him in the morning — never a man like him, indulging in sweet, stupid nothings, if it weren’t for the fact that she takes every single one as a coin in the pocket, a diamond plucked from dirt, a flutter of love settling in the cavernous heart. 

Today, he doesn’t move from his usual perch and instead watches her work. Skin of pale ivory, reams of parchment, eyes a dimmer glitter than usual. 

_Oh, Sasuke-kun,_ she sighs, _I think it’s coming to an end._

Eyes coal, the innards of a gutted mine. As his life follows patterns, destiny has a way of bringing him back to the beginning, following the same dismal, devastating musical canon, tethering him to dark roots. 

_I was gone too often. Again. I was given a second chance, and squandered it._

Sakura leans back in her chair, arms folded. Even as weak as she looks, she manages a cheeky pout.

 _Don’t dwell,_ she admonishes, _we had more than we hoped, another time around the sun. We laughed, and we loved._

 _It’s never enough._ His voice flickers out, a candle dying, rasping at the close. 

_No,_ she admits, sorrowful. _It never is._

So he sits, and sits, and watches the moon rise and her skin bleed into an infirm shade of blue. Translucent.

Sasuke feels him in the doorway, feels his eyes take in the empty desk, linger on the dead flowers in a vase, consider the moon.

“You won’t come back, will you?”

“I’ll go, Kakashi. It’s safer this way.” 

He’s glad he doesn’t have to press with the powers of his office — this isn’t political. This is the fate of shinobi, tools of the state. They’ll be giving her hard-earned space to someone new tomorrow, and he’s not quite sure how long Sasuke can hold on after a blow like this. 

His former student sits, bent as if beaten, making some horrible, feral sound that comes from every atom of being.

It could be the final, dismal tremble and wail of his soul coming apart. 

There’s nothing grisly about the state in which they eventually find his body; he simply laid down to die after the banal task of murdering his lover’s killers. Finishing a job, taking shade underneath a tree after, relenting, soul untethering from its earthly shell. 

Except for his eyes. 

Kakashi can see the report details wrought real in his dreams — sockets gaping black and hollowed, crows nibbling at the flesh remnants. 

Blinking against the image, film negatives imposed over his own exhausted gaze, lamenting in the sediment of his soul how little ended up changing after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope everyone is happy and healthy! If anything I write for SasuSaku makes you feel the feels - 
> 
> Check out [Red](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26054191) for smut, or current WIP [Sirens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449026/chapters/58998157) for a modern AU. 
> 
> I also put snippets and other chatter out into universe on Twitter under the same name.


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